StartMobile: An Intelligent Phone Assistant in 2006
During 2005-2006, a group of CSAIL researchers led by Boris Katz developed StartMobile, a system that allowed users to interact with their phones using natural language, before the iPhone even existed! This video made in May 2006 describes some of the capabilities of the system.
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/16745/
http://publications.csail.mit.edu/abstracts/abstracts07/boris-startmobile/boris-startmobile.html
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/infolab/publications/Katz-MobileEnvironments.pdf